


Capricious Eros

by AgapantoBlu



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: But really only slightly, I'm not sure I really got what they meant so there might be mistakes, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Incorrect Mention of Russian Anti-LGBT Laws, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 02:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8603908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: “I don’t like Yakov.” He slipped on the ice before Viktor could close his mouth, opened in shock, again and ask him for a reason to his words.
    
    
    He reached the centre and took his starting position with absolute certainity that the Eros he was going to show would have been once again different from the one he had used to skate up until then.
  
    The first notes loosened up his arms.
 Since talking to Vitya is the same as talking to a wall, Yakov tries to convince Yuuri that Viktor’s place is in the rink, not playing coach on the sidelines.
Yuuri disagrees. Strongly.
***
[Warnings: Post Episode 7 - Canon Compliant - Mention of anti-LGBT laws in Russia, and slight Homophobia]





	

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to make researches about the Russian anti-LGBT laws but I found contradicting sources and unclear details so I ended up leaving everything kind of nebulous. Please, forgive me for that. And I am aware Yakov is probably not as bad as I made him out to be here, but I haven't forgiven him for telling Viktor not to talk to him before he would be ready to beg to be let skate again (Yakov, f*ck you), so I don't care. 
> 
> Also, petty Yuuri gives me life.

 

**_Capricious Eros_ **

 

For a moment, at first, he had thought there had been a misunderstanding on his part. He had never been that good with English - despite working in an onsen for tourists - before he started with international skating and even now, with his continuous exercise talking with the journalists and Viktor, sometimes he still inevitably ended up missing some words or mixing them up. His pronunciation, he knew well, was far from perfect, but Viktor too had an heavy Russian accent, in whatever language he spoke, and sometimes it was hard to follow him.

A little voice in his mind, one of those that spoke with fake indifference and that one simply couldn't  _not_ imagine as checking its own polished nails, made him notice that Yakov let Russian into English far less than Viktor. That he had spoken his words slowly, staring at him dead in the eyes. That he had given every syllabi a specific weigh and intonation to make its meaning absolutely unequivocal.

“ _Tell Vitya to stop playing coach._ ”

Yuuri spent a moment to curse his bladder and the nerves that had pushed him to drink two water bottles in between the start and the end of his pre-competition interviews. Now, finally free of his duties as Viktor took care of the last reporters, he had tried to reach the toilet, but only to find himself trapped in what looked like a planned ambush.

The Russian competition had been in his nightmares for days after Viktor's reckless gesture at the end of the Chinese event. Obviously the journalists had been breathing on both their necks, but with some help from Phichit and Christophe they had managed to avoid them until they had left China. Later, with Saint Petersburg in their eyes and Russian air in their lungs, the excuse of practice had been enough to push the media away.

Now, not even an hour since his turn, Yuuri realized they had highly underestimated the situation, and most of all the direction the attack could have come from.

“Ah—… I, actual—… I don—… Uh?”  _Great. Eloquent. This is how you do it._

Yakov frowned, and Yuuri knew he was surely wondering for what kind of imbecile his pupil had quit skating. Surely he was hating him, like everybody else after all. But if with the world Yuuri wanted to be cruel, to put Viktor in display just for the thrill of then keeping him for himself, sharing nothing but some sentence to a journalist or a look at the camera in which the both of them would have appeared anyway, with Yakov it seemed to be different.

Yakov didn't want Viktor, not as his ultimate goal at least. Yakov wanted Viktor to stop coaching, he didn't care about Yuuri himself.

The man sighed, with the exasperated heaviness of an adult talking to a kid, or a parent to a son that's too distracted to pay him any attention. When he opened his eyes - so little within that face of harsh and sharp angles, in the reddish skin and wrinkles from time and continuous if maybe not always genuine rage -, those teal irises were just as merciless as the words Yuuri translated in his mind with shock.

“I told him already in Beijing _,-_ " he was rattling off, in a broken and fragmented English, cut by a raw voice and an offense that was apparently impossible to heal, "-but god forbids that idiot ever listens to me, so I'm telling you now. Viktor must stop playing and grow up at once." He frowned even more. "He already proved he's pathetic as a coach."

The same voice from before, nails forgotten, was repeating the last word with a sound of tongue clicking in offense.  _Pathetic_. That mad had just called Viktor pathetic.

Yakov shook his head. "If he'll come begging me soon, maybe he'll get to skate for some years more, and-"

"That's not it!"

Two girl skaters, busy laughing together as they left the bathroom, stopped immediately in hearing the loud voice, clearly alliterated, and Yakov didn't flinch, sure, but his eyes widened at the vehemence he was being confronted with.

Yuri ignored everything. Fists clenched at his sides and head held high, his hair already slicked back and Eros costume wrapping his figure smoothly under his tracksuit jacket to give him all the confidence of a mischievous seductress, he took the three steps that led him right into Yakov's personal space, so close there was barely a palm in between them.

At first, he knew, he had had the same expression of when in the car park Viktor had told him he would retire in case of loss, but the reaction he felt mounting in him, oh no, that was  _far_ different. He felt it boiling in the pit of his stomach like scorching lava that was speeding up his heart and pumping in his ears, that made him taller and stronger and  _pettier_. That same strength that he got from blades under his feet and ice obeying his commands, that strength that had pushed him to take liberty after liberty, to give orders - he, of all people - even to his own idol, to  _disobey_ the great Viktor Nikiforov just for the satisfaction of shutting the world up.

Now was burning, Yuuri, to shut a single man up.

"That's not it," he repeated, his voice lower but his whisper poisonous, enough to kill an elephant at least. "Viktor is _good_. He knows what he's doing. He makes his own mistakes, sure, but he's  _not_ pathetic." His brown eyes weren't as cold as Viktor's blue ones, but they were dark chasms promising an endless void and a rage that sucked everything in. "And he doesn't need to beg anyone. Ever." The mere idea was repulsing, Viktor humiliating himself in front of that man... No, Yuuri cannot conceive that. "I wouldn't want anybody else as my coach."

_And if he has to beg someone, he will beg me_ , a part of him hissed, but for the moment he silenced it.

Yakov seemed surprised, but not impressed and even less intimidated, by the sudden hostility of the skater in front of him. Sure, the change had been so sudden it had left him confused for a moment and the guy's intensity was unexpected. But, in the end, this was Viktor's pupil:  _obviously_ he had had to learn all of the flaws of that rascal, far more than his techniques or his style.

"Boy,-" and his words came out heavily accented with irritation, but still clear, unmistakable, "-there's difference between a good fuck and a good coach."

Viktor's lips on his; his apologies later in their hotel; fears whispered in a dark shared room; the trembling of a body so used to victory it had no idea as to how express uncertainty. " _I don't want anything bad to come your way, Yuuri, please._ " The event in Russia that was the diving board for the Grand Prix and a walk on a rope a hundred meters from the ground, teetering under the cameras' eyes and above the Russian anti-LGBT laws.

Yuuri's hand had a jerk, as if ordering him to lift it and allow it to hit the nose of that monster that dared spitting such denigrating and dangerous words without care for who they could hurt and what they could cause.

The skaters that had left the bathroom widened their eyes and looked around, clearly worried about who could have heard. Because Vickor was only Yuuri's, now, but everybody still thought it was better to have him in Japan than to lose him forever.

"You don't know anything." Yuuri could  _not_ hit him. He couldn't ruin the whole work of those past months, all of their efforts, that chance that could have been the only one for both of them. He couldn't draw any attention and put in danger both himself but most of all Viktor. "You don't now anything _at all_."

He turned on his heels and hurried up in leaving that corridor before the overbearing voice in his head convinced him that being excluded from the competition for hitting an opposing coach - and possibly going to jail - were just laughable  _side effects_ of an acceptable action.

Yakov looked at him leaving and grunted a curse between his clenched teeth before finally going back to Georgi.

 

***

 

“Yuuri?”

“Yes?” Too clipped. Even Yuuri himself had noticed the clear irritation in his own voice.

The announcer at the loudspeakers announced Yurio's results, sing that within a few seconds it would have been his turn to go out on the ice, and he pretended to let himself being distracted by the competition to not acknowledge the slight tilt of Viktor's head, the light in those teal eyes staring at him as if trying to rip his secret out with some tongs.

Had they been in Japan, or still in China, Yuuri didn't doubt Viktor would have recurred to any method - usually some clear invasion of personal space and some gesture far too intimate for the cameras all around them - to make him say what was wrong. But they weren't in Japan, they were in  _Russia_ and Viktor was standing a meter from Yuuri, close enough to speak without being heard by anyone outside of them but also far enough not to suggest anything more than a normal coach-skater relationship.

In all that space, Yuuri felt his air missing. He was silently suffocating as he took off his tracksuit jacket to reveal black skin-thigh texture and shiny crystals. He caressed his costume as if it was a promise, the forbidden satisfaction of showing off a side of himself that outside the rink he would have had to hide for a bit longer.

“ _A kiss in another country isn't a proof_ _, even if in broadcasted worldwide,”_  Viktor had said as they were on the airplane, the armrest between them feeling like a wall tall a mile and cold as marble. “ _It will be enough to keep a low profile and everything will be all right_ _._ ”

“ _Next: Katsuki Yuuri, Japan._ ”

“Your turn.” Viktor smiled taking the jacket and the blades covers Yuuri was offering him. They hands barely brushed, just enough to let a burning mark on their fleshes. Just to  _remember_. “Just like Beijing, okay? Leave them all gaping.”

“I don't care about them now.” It was the first time Yuuri was refusing the spectators' presence, he knew: usually, they were either his main source of stress or his motivation to give his best. Ironic, he thought remembering the last time in Beijing, how Viktor was by now shifting in both the roles continuously. “I only have a person in mind.”

Viktor's eyes had a flash, but the man held back from looking around. He didn't even fix his hair, as he usually did in the rare occasions in which he felt nervous, nor his necktie or his black coat. "Yuuri," he just said, with a hint of warning in his voice, but the other shook his head.

“ _Next: Katsuki Yuuri, Japan. Please, reach the rink._ ”

"I don't like Yakov." He slipped on the ice before Viktor could close his mouth, opened in shock, again and ask him for a reason to his words.

He reached the centre and took his starting position with absolute certainity that the Eros he was going to show would have been once again different from the one he had used to skate up until then.

The first notes loosened up his arms.

 

***

 

Viktor wasn't deluded into thinking he had learnt how to deal with Yuuri. Beijing had opened his eyes quite brusquely on how unable he was to handle the emotivity and sudden strength outburst of his lover -  _lover_ , a word he had yet to use in a loud voice, but that he was set into repeating and repeating and repeating again and probably carving in his flesh at a certain point as soon as they had left Russia -. But the same, that last sentence was catching him unprepared.

His ex coach was peculiar person and, with such a character, he wasn't that surprised that Yuuri didn't appreciate him, to be honest; but Yakov had also never hidden his despise for his choice of quitting skating and consequently had put quite some effort in avoiding at all costs the skater that had ripped his pupil from the competitions. Yuuri, though, wasn't the kind of person to hate without a reason, to make such snarky remarks without a motive, so something had to have happened.

From the corner of his eye, bringing a curled hand to cover the unhappy bent of his lips, he spied on Yakov a few meters aside, together with Georgi and with his eyes on the ice, Indeed, he too seemed quite annoyed at the sight of Yuuri.

The first notes ripped Viktor from his thoughts, with the promise of letting him wrack his brain around the matter later, after he had ensured a good score at the end of the first performance of the competition, and he went back to look at the rink.

Yuuri was different, it was clear since the first moves.

His dancing and movements were perfect, his feet on the ice firm and precise to the millimeter, but there was something in his waist and arms...

He was fluent and the moment after he wasn't anymore; to the softness of allusions and wheedling always followed sudden raptus, movements closed abruptly like slaps on too daring hands. Yuuri was still the most beautiful woman seducing her playboy, making a prey of the predator with the fire of her body and the ice in her heart, but now she was more _possessive_ and in the same gesture she used to caress him she shoed away the other ladies, both the refused and the ignored in the same way. She was suave with her lover, but dared the others from trying to approach him, acting behind his knowledge, both seducing and venomous. That slightly childish Eros was stunning on Yuuri's pale face, on his expression changing from seductive to presumptuous as different lights fell on him.

Viktor had no idea what Yakov had done or said, but the declaration there in front of everybody couldn't have been cleared had that guy carved it in the ice with his skates: Yuuri owned Viktor and could do what he wanted of him, and he had no intention of giving him back no matter how much the poor souls that had had their chance before him tried to take him back.

Not even the quadruple Salchow could stop him, and it was flawless.

When the last note broke in the spectators' applauses, Yuuri didn't seem to be hugging himself. His arms seemed wrapped around the mysterious man, his conquest as much as his prey.

Viktor waited for him stiffly at the Kiss and Cry. Yuuri was just as detached accepting his things back. Sitting close, they waited for the verdict: above a hundred points, on par with some of the best performances of Viktor himself. 

They moved in the inside rooms, with the other skaters that had already performed, without sparing Georgi on the ice and Yakov in the bleachers a glance.

 

***

 

Phichit looked at Yuuri with worry, and it wouldn't have been that big of a surprise if the Thailandese skater, with all his virtual and real connections, had already known of the confrontation between his friend and Yakov.

Viktor frowned at the sight, but kept silent.

 

***

 

Georgie's performance hadn't been the best, definitely, and it allowed him barely a fourth place, but Yuuri didn't care. He stared at the door instead of the screen, for the whole time, just to see Yakov's expression as he walked in and felt on himself the scalding gaze of the  _first placed._

He wasn't disappointed, indeed, in the broken line of the mouth and the wrinkles through the eyebrows, the darker shade of the skin and the flash in the eyes. As their glares met, the tension in the room spiked up.

Chris maybe tried to say something, or to break the tension with a joke, but nobody listened to him. Viktor had been too busy moving his eyes from one to the other and Phichit seemed unsure if it was indeed the care to physically hold his friend back. Yurio was moving his gaze between them, clearly confused. 

Yakov clicked his tongue, retreating from the eyes challenge but moving forward, walking to Yuuri's side.

"This doesn't change anything," he hissed, not looking at him but glaring at Viktor instead.

"No, it does't," Yuuri answered, firm, shifting the weight on his feet so that it could have seemed accidental, had it not been just enough of a movement to break the line of sight between the two Russian men. "It just proves I was right."

"You...!" Yakov turned his head suddenly, and Georgi seemed to let out a scared sound that was reflected also on Yurio's and Viktor's faces. As if none of the three had ever thought someone could answer like that to their coach. Yuuri ignored them.

" _I_ am Viktor's skater," he snapped, his voice barely within the limits of a normal volume.

There was more in that single sentence that what anyone who had never seen them together, but seen  _for real_ , could understand. There was as much of an affirmation as of a declaration of possession, a confession just as much as a refusal in the absolute superiorità of a diamond over a simple old rag.

“Yakov.” Yuuri only caught in the periphery of his gaze the tall and austere woman, black hair pulled back in a bun and a hand firm on Yurio's shoulder, calling the coach the same way she could have called a dog, but he didn't move his gaze. "Let's go."

 

***

 

In his defense, Viktor held back until when they were in his old house, a flat that was far too big for a single person and far too clean for him to have lived in there with the same freedom he had used in Japan, but surely better and safer than a hotel room or an apartment of the federation.

Once inside, he locked the door and then grabbed Yuuri's waist from behind and buried his face in the space between the shoulder-blades. "What did Yakov tell you?"

“Nothing.”

“ _Yuuuuuuuuuri!_ ”

Yuuri wanted to stay angry, his irritation surely all but faded, but it was hard to do that with a tall handsome Russian athlete kissing his neck. “Viktor!”

“What did Yakov tell you?”

“Nothing important!”

Viktor allowed Yuuri to turn in his hug only so he could look at his face as he grinned mischievously. “That's already something more than before. How many kisses do I need to get the whole story?”

He didn't even wait for an answer before grabbing the other by his sides and lifting him, almost effortlessly, to carry him to the sofa. He let them both fall on the pillows as Yuuri laughed of him and then he laid on his back so that he could keep the other on his chest. He kissed his lips, but cautiously because after all they hadn't gone much further after the kiss in Beijing.

Yuuri smiled gently down to him when he pulled back, with his blushed face showing how the intimacy was still weird to him and with the glasses slipping down his nose to make him just as adorable as funny. “I'm still not telling you.”

“ _Yuuri!_ ”

 

***

 

For some more kisses on the lips, Viktor decided that maybe it wasn't that important after all, whatever it was that Yakov had said.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Come yell (or just politely talk, it's all right) at me on Tumblr at @agapantoblu


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